Radeon HD 5870 vs Radeon HD 6850

Intro

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 6850, which has core clock speeds of 775 MHz on the GPU, and 1000 MHz on the 1024 MB of GDDR5 RAM. It features 960 SPUs along with 48 TAUs and 32 Rasterization Operator Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 6850		127 Watts
Radeon HD 5870		188 Watts
	Difference: 61 Watts (48%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 5870 will be 20% faster than the Radeon HD 6850 in general, because of its higher bandwidth. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		153600 MB/sec
Radeon HD 6850		128000 MB/sec
	Difference: 25600 (20%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon HD 5870 should be a lot (more or less 83%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 6850. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		68000 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		37200 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 30800 (83%)

Pixel Rate

If using a high resolution is important to you, then the Radeon HD 5870 is superior to the Radeon HD 6850, though only just barely. (explain)

Radeon HD 5870		27200 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 6850		24800 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 2400 (10%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the max amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transferred past the external memory interface in a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the interface width by its memory clock speed. If the card has DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The better the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core clock speed of the chip. The better this number, the better the card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum amount of pixels the graphics card can possibly write to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. The number is worked out by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel fill rate is also dependant on quite a few other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the maximum fill rate.